Citrix NetScaler SD-WAN Licensing

As our customers renewed their Citrix licensing this past year, some have seen SD-WAN in their list of available licenses. A question I often get asked is what is this SD-WAN license and how did I use it?

There are two components to Citrix NetScaler SD-WAN: WAN Optimization and Virtual WAN.

WAN Optimization has been a part of the Citrix product portfolio for years, since the acquisition of Orbital Data in 2006. It is basically a network optimization device that provides QoS functionality. The technology can also be deployed as a Windows Server and a mobile plug-in for PCS. The product has changed its name over the years from WANScaler to Branch Repeater to CloudBridge, and finally to NetScaler SD-WAN.

Virtual WAN is a new technology added to the Citrix product portfolio. It is a software-based technology that allows you to aggregate multiple network links into a single highly available network. This allows applications to take the best path to achieve the highest application performance. It is often referred to as a lower cost alternative to an expense multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) solution.

The licensing model for Citrix SD-WAN is based on whether you license each component individually or combined:

Optimization Edition (WANOP) = WAN Optimization

Standard Edition (VW/SE) = Virtual WAN

Enterprise Edition (EE) = WAN Optimization + Virtual WAN

If you are seeing SD-WAN in your list of available Citrix licenses, it is probably for the WAN Optimization component. At some point you either purchased one of the products under one of its prior names or received it as part of licensing bundle for another product (XenApp/XenDesktop Platinum, Workspace Suite, etc.).

Contact Gotham for information on how we can help your organization better understand and implement Citrix NetScaler SD-WAN.

Tim has over 10 years’ experience in the design, development, and deployment of Windows infrastructure technologies. His experience also includes the high-level design of complex thin client and server-based computing environments. He is highly fluent in all aspects of Windows and Citrix infrastructure technologies.